Today is the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s arrival in Washington, D.C. as president-elect. He snuck into the capital at dawn, hours ahead of schedule, having traveled through the night to evade a supposed assassination conspiracy in Baltimore. The so-called Baltimore Plot remains a matter of contention. Nobody knows for sure whether it posed an actual threat. Lincoln was mocked for his behavior and soon regretted it. He also became skeptical of those who warned him about the need for more presidential security–a skepticism that may have contributed to his death four years later.

Today is also the sesquicentennial of the opening scene of my novel The First Assassin, which imagines that the Baltimore Plot was real.